When William Pemberton’s twenty-six-year marriage ended in 2011, he says, “In a lot of ways I thought my life was over.” But as the longtime business manager of Mast Shoes, he’d always been close to his fellow staff members, whom he calls “a family.” And as he navigated his divorce, a coworker named Diane Rosecrans seemed to understand his challenges better than most.

Photo: J. Adrian Wylie
“My parents were divorced when I was a kid, and my breakup with my first husband was painful,” she explains. “I just kept telling him that it does get better.”
They’d worked together about two years at that point, and William knew she loved art. So later that year, he asked if she’d like to take a drive to the Detroit Institute of Art.
“We were friends,” Diane says. “When he asked, I thought, ‘Is this a date? Or are we just buddies going to the DIA?’” (William hoped it was a date.)
She thought it was “really sweet he’d ask me to a place that he knew would be my ultimate great experience.” The DIA visit led to movies and dinners, and their friendship quickly turned to love. But the pair kept their romance a secret from coworkers.
Molly Mast-Koss was the first to notice their spark a couple months later. As the third-generation owner of Mast Shoes with her dad, Greg, she hosted a team-building cooking class for the staff. There was plenty of wine flowing, and, Molly recalls, “I thought I was seeing things.
“Out of the corner of my eye I see William’s hand rub Diane’s back,” Molly says. “I was both like ‘Okay … That’s awesome!’ And … ‘Uh-oh!’”
Soon after, William confirmed the sighting to Molly. He said the Masts didn’t need to worry: He wanted to marry Diane.
The couple wrote their own vows and tied the knot in Tecumseh on August 19, 2012, surrounded by the Mast family and employees. Best man and longtime friend and coworker Michael Grant, who’s known William—“Bill” to him—since the mid-1980s, joined other staff members in sharing their musical talents at the wedding: He played the guitar and sang John Prine’s “In Spite of Ourselves.”
Grant says the shoe store attracts “compassionate and creative people,” and that the Pembertons—Diane took William’s name—are a great example of that.
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The couple were both born and raised in Michigan, and both had difficult childhoods. William grew up with three siblings in a poor family south of Cadillac. Diane grew up in Jackson with her two sisters as they grappled with their parents’ substance abuse, mental health issues, and depression.
After Diane’s parents split when she was eight, they moved often and changed schools five times as their mother had a series of relationships. Focusing on art became a “source of joy and refuge,” she says, and her teachers encouraged her to pursue it in college. She studied at U-M, the College for Creative Studies, and at Stanford as a visiting art student, finishing her degree at San Francisco Art Institute on a full scholarship.
When she was twenty-six, she moved to Ann Arbor and joined the Tsogyelgar Buddhist community at White Lotus Farms. “The teachers there took me in and changed my life drastically,” she says. She studied and lived with them until she found her own place. “I was a very, very happy single person,” she says, working at a bakery prior to Mast Shoes, doing her art, and practicing her meditation. “I never thought I’d marry again.” (She was married to her first husband for three years after a long-term relationship with him.)
When William was growing up, his dad was often unemployed, so his mom “held the family together with a long-haul delivery route for the Grand Rapids Press and by clipping coupons.” Through a “combination of talent and poverty,” he won a full scholarship to Interlochen Arts Academy, where he played tuba, which led him to U-M to study music.
At the time, Mast Shoes had a campus store on Liberty St., and in 1986, Tom Mast (Greg’s brother) hired William to work there. Soon after, he left U-M to marry and start a family. (He has two adult children: Jordan, thirty-two, and Maxwell, twenty-eight.)
In 2002, he combined his love of history with his love of music to cofound the River Raisin Ragtime Revue. Based in Tecumseh, it’s one of just three professional ragtime orchestras in the country. He plays tuba and serves as chair and executive director of the orchestra, which performs at Greenfield Village, the Henry Ford, and other venues.
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More than an hour before Mast Shoes opens on a Wednesday morning, Diane, fifty-nine, and William, fifty-seven, sit side-by-side inside the Westgate shop and sip Barry Bagels coffee. They wear what they sell—gray suede Dansko wedge boots for Diane, while William wears his new Keen hybrid hiking shoes. “Comfort can be stylish!” he says.
The couple drive in to work each day from Tecumseh, taking the back roads from their 1826 Federal-style home filled with five cats. Believed to be the oldest continually lived-in house in Michigan, it’s where Mast Shoes coworkers gather for homemade oyster stew each Christmas Eve. “This year it was seventeen pounds” of oysters, William says.
As usual, they’ve both been up since 4 a.m. William uses the time to work on emails and grant applications for the Ragtime Revue, followed by tuba practice. On the other side of the house, Diane practices Vajrayana Buddhist meditation, which “trains your mind to be single-pointed and includes a lot of visualization … the art that comes from the practice is stunning.” She follows it with time in her art studio, where she works with acrylics and incorporates paper, fabrics, yarn, and threads into collages. She also does woodblock printmaking. She’s been commissioned to paint Buddhist subjects, murals, and portraits—as well as posters and CD covers for the Ragtime Revue. By the time they arrive at the store, Williams says they are “energized” after pursuing their individual interests, and ready for the workday.
“The most important thing she’s taught me is the patience,” William says of Diane. “Slowing down a little bit. Being more present. That’s a big Buddhist thing.” Also, he adds, “she’s really cute.”
“From the get-go I’ve been attracted to how kind he is to people,” Diane says. About half of Mast Shoes customers are referred by health care providers, so they see “lots of customers with different special needs [like] dementia or injuries” that require extra time, and she admires his “genuine concern for making a difference for folks.”
Sales associate Christa Krol, who’s among nine full-time employees who’ve arrived for their morning shifts, jokes that if she had to work every day with her husband, she’s sure there’d be times she’d “shoot daggers at him.” Krol says the Pembertons’ relationship is “an extension of how special this place is … Molly built this place to embody generosity and care and basic human kindness and compassion.
“I think these two are a really good reflection of what we do here.”
What a beautiful article. We love having William or Diane wait on us. We live Mast Shoes!!
Sincerely
Hal and Pat March
Hillsdale, MI
What an interesting news letter. It is the only one I read